Editing Midlothian campaign (section)

==The campaign==
By 1880, Gladstone's dogged focus on the issue had dragged it to the forefront of public attention, and in the [[1880 United Kingdom general election|general election of 1880]], Gladstone toured a series of cities giving speeches of up to five hours on the subject. The nature of his orations has often been compared to that of sermons, and his fiery, emotive, but logically structured speeches are credited with swaying a large number of undecided voters to the Liberals in the 1880s, and ousting Disraeli's last [[Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative]] government.

Equally important to the large scale of attendance at these meetings (several thousand came to each, and given the relatively narrow scale of the [[Suffrage|franchise]], this meant Gladstone could address a large proportion of electors in each district) was the widespread reporting of Gladstone's speeches and the public reaction to them. Paul Brighton argues that it was a highly successful media event:
:What was new about Midlothian was not that Gladstone spoke from the platform. This was already common-place for many front-rank politicians. It was the fact that the campaign was effectively designed as a media event, with specific attention to the deadlines and operational requirements of the [[journalist]]s covering it and crafted for maximum impact in the morning and evening [[newspaper|paper]]s.<ref>{{cite book|author=Paul Brighton|title=Original Spin: Downing Street and the Press in Victorian Britain|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PGKJDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT208|year=2015|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing|page=204|isbn=9780857728142}}</ref>